Math Equation : Cooking Dinners

The more I cook at home the more I realize that in some respects it is a lost cause.  

It is kind of sad that I start a post like that.  I like cooking more and more and would like to add to my repertoir and be able to create LOTS of interesting meals for me and my kids.  

The frustrating problem is that there is this math equation.  It is an inverted truth.  Something like Arrow up on PT as arrow goes down on ET.  In other words the more time you spend in the kitchen preparing (preparing time) the food for dinner or whatever , the less time it takes for the family to eat it (eating time).  I would say that every hour in preparation equals 10 minutes less on eating time.  So that if I spent two hours cooking a meal including preparation and cooking time, then eating time is going to be around plus minus 30 minutes and maybe 20 minutes.  If I spent 3 hours in the kitchen then eating time is going to be 20 minutes for sure.  

Recently I added some "new" meals to my abilities.  I made homemade sauce

We had an orange one

spaghetti. This was a specialty of my fathers'.  He had a famous recipe which was never written down and thus was lost with his death. Except that he told it to us in person once or twice.  Sort of sliding off my original topic it went like this, "oh a pound of ground beef, some onions, stewed tomatoes, garlic, one green pepper, a can of tomato paste, a pinch of spices a, b, c, d and e and f, salt, pepper.  Cook in the crock pot for five hours".   Yeah, something like that.  So I got my mothers recipe which she related to me in the same manner but at least I think I have it down.  And she is still alive so that I can ask if I have missed something.  But she cant remember it either by now.  

In any case, you have to cook the sauce for a long time.  The throwing of everything together takes about half an hour to 45 minutes of mixing and cooking.  And I calculate that it should cook for another hour and a half once I have everything together.  It comes down to about two hours of cooking. I wish I had a crock pot I could cook it proper for four hours in there like my Father used to do.  But we dont... yet.  So I cook it for two hours or more.  Plus the shopping and getting the goods.  Cooking the spaghetti when the sauce is just about cooked and this and that it is at least two and half hours.  (Note, my father did this in much less time).  

Well if I can even get the servings out before my kids have snuck a bowl of the sauce away and eaten it in their room, the eating time is approximately 20-25 minutes depending on if they have a second helping or not.  Lasagne takes about an hour and half to make with prep and then cooking, maybe even less, hour and fifteen to twenty to minutes and I think the eating time on this is 30 minutes, although my older daughter can do it in the same 20 minutes.  

I guess to some extent it does depend on the age of the kid too. Older daughter, teenager, twenty minutes and then she is back on her gadget watching, playing or listening.  I dont allow her to do any of that while she is eating, so the result is she eats quicker, "finishes" her meal and is back online AFTER dinner.  Even though I am eating still. My Younger daughter takes a bit more time during dinner, but that is often because she is trying to make it look like she took a lot of time to eat not so much.  If she can get away with sitting at the table for half an hour and make it look like she ate a lot then she can leave half her meal on her plate and say she ate a lot and for a long time.  Although she does love my spaghetti and lasagne.  

Pork fried rice they didnt eat a-t all!!

I am not about to make a meal which takes 4 hours to cook, but I assume that might be eaten in world record time.  Unless it is some roast fowl which takes a long time to cook, like turkey or duck.   Maybe the math equation is, "kids take 20 to 30 minutes to eat dinner... no matter what".  I shy away from trying to cook something really grand, because I really dont want to spend all that time on the meal and then it is done in 15 minutes. I couldnt take that. 

My mother and I used to fix this problem by having a really long dessert at dinner with coffee.  I mean with the dessert dinner could often stretch to an hour and a half easily.  Those were great meals. And we ate them outside on our porch overlooking the lake in summer.  

The more time you spend eating meals, the happier life is.  Can I say that? I think so.  Eating meals slowly and peacefully is better than heroin (not that I have ever taken heroin).  The sheer relaxation and good inner feeling caused extends your life by some magnitude of time.  Fast food (and heroin) destroys you.  

I didnt actually cook this one

But I am getting way off topic.  

Suffice to say that I have enjoyed learning and making new meals for my family and I would like to continue that.  I recommend this much more than ordering from some new ordering line, grubby or unter.  Take the time to make more home made food.  UNLESS it takes too much time in which case I am not interested because I dont want to spend SO much time in the kitchen just to see it wolfed down by my kids... and its gone.